Gold Weaver | ✓

epilogue

There was something that I just couldn't get off my mind. I'd turned it over and over in my head, it poking into my consciousness whenever I tried to relax.

"Can I ask you something?" He nodded, so I continued. "It's about your... powers." Again, he seemed fully intent on me. His face hardened in concentration. "You told me something about the people that gave you your powers. You weren't born with them?"

He let out a breath. I wondered if he'd answer at all as his gaze turned to the wall, before resting back on me. "No, I wasn't born with them. I was given them."

"By who?"

"They call themselves The Fates," he told me, voice lowering. "Or the Moirai."

My town wasn't good for much, that was for sure, but you couldn't fault the library— extensive, though small. Mr Perkly ran it. I always remembered him as having a fascination about mythology. They were the books I'd favoured as a child.

I paled. "The Three Witches?"

He nodded, solemnly. "Yes. When I was fifteen, I was out in the woods. There were hunters there, too, but they couldn't see me. You could hear their shouting and the horses and the dogs and—" he looked disturbed, sickly white as he recounted the story. "They were hunting foxes. I could see one trapped under a fallen branch. The hunters were coming closer. I did what anyone would do."

"You helped it?"

"They would have killed it if I hadn't." He ran a hand over his face. The ring on his wedding finger caught the light, making something settle uncomfortably in my chest. "Three things appeared. They wore these huge hoods. I couldn't see their faces. It was just like looking into an infinite cavern. I'd heard the stories, the myths but I'd never seen one up close. I wanted to run, but I felt frozen."

"What did they say?"

"They told me that I had interrupted fate, that in saving the fox or at least helping it, I'd disrupted what they'd decided eons ago."

I felt my fingers tremble, wanting to reach out and comfort him but not quite knowing where boundaries lay. "Did they punish you?"

He chuckled, but there wasn't any substance of humour behind it. "In a way, yes they did. They told me I had two options. I could either take the fox's place or..."

"Turn things to gold?"

"Doesn't sound like a hard decision does it?" He asked, looking to me for the first time in a while. "I asked them what the catch was. I knew better than anyone that people paint their words to suit, but there's always a darkness behind the canvas."

"What was it?" I asked. "What was the darkness?"

"They told me that I was a perceptive boy," he said. "I almost took it as a compliment. They said that in accepting the powers, I would also be accepting the price. The greater the power, the greater the price."

"So you had to pay a big price?"

"Oh, Eleanor," he said. "Turning gold is nothing, nothing to what the others can do. Mine looks fickle, meaningless compared to theirs."

I ignored the crazed glint in his eye. "Does Mahin know about it?"

He seemed to sober up a little at my words. "No," he said. "No, she doesn't. It's better that way."

The atmosphere changed, lightening.

He bit his thumb, thinking silently to himself. I set Isa down in her small cot. She didn't stir, only snuggled more into the large teddy already waiting in there for her. I smiled down at her.

I was about to ask him whether he wanted a cup of tea when he spoke for the first time in several minutes.

"I didn't think seeing you with a child that I thought was your own would hurt me as much as it did."

I didn't really know what to say to that.

We'd never spoken in the last few years. It was for the best, I'd always thought. Less complicated. More respectful. It gave me a chance to forget about everything between us, pretend I wasn't still completely and utterly in love with the new king.

"You don't think I feel the same when I see the three of you?"

He didn't seem shocked or taken aback that I knew of his baby. Dark skin like Mahin and golden eyes like him. If anything, it'd be more shocking if I hadn't known of his new heir, what with it being brandished on every poster, on every newspaper.

"I suppose we had something really special, didn't we?"

"I suppose we did."

Again, silence hung between us like a forbidden curtain neither of us wanted to touch. In fear that if we pulled it back, we'd find something neither of us wanted to face. Not just yet, anyway.

"I think about you a lot."

"As do I." It was risky territory but I wasn't prepared to back away from it.

"I imagine what it would have been like. For us to have lived as nobodies, for me to have found a normal job, for us to have been together, for you to have had our children. For us to have lived happily."

"Some stories are not meant to have a happy ending."

"If I'd begged harder, would you have run away with me?"

Yes, I wanted to say, but I knew that look that swam in his eyes. So I lied. "No."

"I never stopped loving you and I never started loving her."

I wanted to shout at him, scream and cry like the teenager I still was. But instead, I smiled. "I should get back." I motioned to the broom leaning against the wall closest to me.

"Me too."

He stood by the door whilst I continued to stand where I was.

"Oh and Almar?" He turned back around. "You look as beautiful as you did that first night in the tower."

He smiled. "As do you."

A thought rugged at me. "What was your price?" I asked. "With the Moirai?"

He kept expressionless but his eyes sung a thousand songs. Told me more than enough. His next word caught me by surprise and yet it was as if I'd known it all along.

"Heartbreak."